Suspect Passions (2 page)

She probably never got any, Syd concluded, but why did some women find it necessary to judge each other’s lives? Didn’t we get enough of that shit from everybody else? The entire lesbian nation should celebrate with cheers and catcalls every time another sister had an orgasm.

*

Regan Desanto ramped down on the accelerator and spun her vehicle out of the Cop Out parking lot. The muscles in her legs ached from the restraint she’d imposed by strolling away from that restroom when she’d really wanted to run. But one thing life had taught her was control. No one would ever see her lose it again. So, anyone watching her walk to the Acura would have seen a woman unaffected by the increased pounding of her heart and the heat surging beneath her skin.

She wondered why she’d gone to Cop Out in the first place. She never found anything she wanted in bars or brothels, and she’d tried several times. But after only a year in High Point, North Carolina, her adjustment was proving more difficult than she imagined. Her intuition had begun to atrophy and her emotions to transform into lumps of home décor in this furniture capital of the world. She knew it really wasn’t the place as much as the disassembly of her life and her relocation hundreds of miles away from everything familiar.

Martha, her fifteen-year partner, had been the essence of her life since they were in college. But last year Regan had been exiled from their relationship like a pile of putrid garbage. Now she was in a strange place with no real friends, an aging grandmother, and no life beyond work. The club had sounded like a good idea earlier, an attempt to begin a social life and maybe even make a few friends. But she didn’t need or want friends who thought sex in a public restroom was fun or acceptable. Regan shivered at the recurring vision and concentrated on where she was going, which seemed to be her grandmother’s assisted-living facility. She parked carelessly outside the building. Her legs shook slightly as she got out of the car.

She took a deep breath to calm the uncustomary pounding of her heart before she tapped lightly at Isadora Pearce’s room. Her grandmother could always tell when she was upset or worried and she didn’t want to alarm her, especially when she wasn’t sure herself why she was so out of sorts.

Her grandmother’s soft voice invited her into the small room that had taken the place of her three-thousand-square-foot home. Inside, the space had been converted into a memory bank filled with anything that evoked a happy story or recollection. She noticed with a pang of guilt that her grandmother was already in bed.

“Hi, Gram. How’re you feeling?” Regan kissed her on the head and slumped into the cushioned rocker beside her.

Izzy Pearce looked surprisingly good for a woman who’d had three heart surgeries in the past five years. Her fiery red hair had been invaded by silver and the result was striking. At seventy-five, her once-flawless facial features had headed south and filled with wrinkles, but her sparkling blue eyes hinted at her astute mind and clever wit.

“Hi, honey. I’m doing great.” Izzy glanced at the large wall clock. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

“I’m sorry it’s so late. I was out riding around. Guess I lost track of time.”

Regan loved Izzy and hated lying to her. She’d been the only person in Regan’s family who helped her in any way, taking her in after high school and helping her get a scholarship to attend Xavier University to study law. Izzy treated her like she mattered. That’s why she’d moved to this small town next to nowhere in the first place; not because Izzy needed
her
but because Regan needed to be close to the one person who thought she was special.

“Don’t ever apologize for coming to visit. But it
is
Friday night. I hoped you were on a date with some hot woman.” Izzy studied her. “You look a little flushed. Maybe you already had the date?”

Regan knew Izzy meant well, but the questions about her personal life always caused a pinch of embarrassment and too much pain. “No, Gram, no date.”

“Then why is your color so high? And you have those little crinkle lines around your eyes that usually mean you’re thinking about something.”

Izzy knew her entirely too well, and her capacity for listening was like being surrounded by a warm blanket. Regan had never been able to resist her invitations to confide, subtle or otherwise. “Okay, I went to a club tonight but it turned out to be a bad idea.” The couple in the ladies’ room flashed through her mind again.

At first, she couldn’t believe anyone would be having sex in such an impersonal, public area. But the moans reverberating off the walls of the cramped space were distinctively sexual, and she was drawn involuntarily toward them. A stall door was open and the scene inside paralyzed her. With her muscles locked, she’d been torn between an urge to run, a compulsion to launch into a legal sermon, and a voyeuristic yearning to watch.

The two women were entwined like braided coils of rope, strong and tight. The contrasts of their bodies, black and white, large and small, dominant and submissive, conjured up unfamiliar desires in Regan that twisted her insides with longing and clouded her mind. Muscles rippled in the stronger woman’s naked back, buttocks, and legs as she manipulated the smaller woman against the stall and rubbed their pelvises together. Throaty pleas from the brunette belied her feeble attempts at physical resistance. Her moans bounced off the tiled walls and plucked at a frayed nerve threatening to unravel inside Regan.

The distinctive smell of arousal mingled with moist air in the confined space and settled over Regan like a second skin. She tried to look away from the intimate exchange but felt as if she’d become an unwilling participant, ensnared in the sights, sounds, and scents of their spiraling sexual serenade.

The dominant woman raised the brunette’s left leg onto the toilet seat, opening and exposing her, stroking and licking her, while she begged for more. Then she entered the smaller woman and plunged her fist deep inside. The power with which she claimed her surprised Regan and forced a gasp from her aching chest. But the brunette’s response was anything but pained.

Her shapely body stiffened. The bronze color of her tanned skin deepened. Preorgasmic tremors twitched and rippled the surface of her skin. Low, husky moans magnified into sharp, needy pants. Then she opened her eyes and looked directly at Regan as the tall woman pistoned her fist in and out of her convulsing frame. Regan shivered. She wasn’t sure if it was from her own arousal or the unseeing emerald green eyes that looked through her.

The brunette’s entire body humped, thrashed as she rode her lover through wave after wave of orgasm. Regan had never seen a woman so fully engaged in sex that she was oblivious to her surroundings. This woman appeared to not only love sex but to crave it for some reason beyond physical pleasure. As her body reveled in the sensations, she stared, unseeing. Regan detected a void in the lust-clouded depths of the woman’s eyes, the absence of something vital. She wondered what could sever the connection between the physical and the emotional in a woman so beautiful and vibrant.

When the brunette finally registered her presence, Regan knew she had to get out before she launched into a diatribe about the inappropriateness of their behavior in public.

“Honey, are you all right? You look all flushed again. What’s going on?” Grandma Izzy was staring at her with those Irish eyes that knew when she was lied to.

“I walked in on a couple having sex in the ladies’ room at this club. Just surprised me.”

Izzy took her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Honey, it wouldn’t do you any harm to have a little sex. It’s been a year since Martha. Get on with your life while you’re still young enough to enjoy it.”

“Please don’t start, Gram. I’m just not ready. All I want is to spend time with you and get more established in my job.” Regan rose from the recliner and kissed her grandmother’s hand. “I love you, Gram. I’ll see you later.”

“Come back soon, honey. I’ve made a new friend I want you to meet. She works as a volunteer, and we’re getting pretty chummy. I think you’d like her.”

“Only if you promise no matchmaking.”

“Who, me?” Izzy feigned hurt feelings as Regan blew her a kiss and left.

On the short drive home, Regan thought about the brunette from the club and about her own reactions to the scene she’d witnessed. How had she let herself get so involved in watching? It
had
been a long time since she had sex but
that
certainly wasn’t her style. Still, she had to admit she’d been aroused by something that she’d never considered, the whole dominance/submissive thing. Even though she was the control freak, Martha had always directed their sex life—when they had it, how they had it, and if they had it. To be aroused by something different was natural, Regan decided, yet something else had happened. She had allowed her compassion for a complete stranger to get the best of her. She’d looked beyond the obvious lack of self-respect such a display implied and seen something deeper. But any woman who would allow herself to be fist-fucked in a public restroom was not someone worthy of her interest.

Regan pulled into the garage of her contemporary-style home and forced the image of the orgasmic brunette from her head and the sharp pangs of arousal from her loins.

*

“You lose the lottery or something?” Jesse Finn asked as Syd plunked herself back down on a stool at the bar.

“Actually, I good as won it.” Syd pulled a memo from the back pocket of her slacks and flattened it out in front of her best friend. “Take a look.”

Jesse had been out running an errand when Syd marched triumphantly into the Cop Out an hour earlier. The owner, barista, and bartender, Jesse served coffee and tea all day to the workforce around city hall, in the middle of High Point’s revitalized furniture district. After five, the back room opened into a small dance floor with intimate seating and the transition from café to club began. Everyone from judges to college students frequented the downtown hot spot. Jesse’s previous law-enforcement experience allowed her to run her establishment with the right combination of discipline and decadence.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” Jesse tilted her head expectantly, a wide grin spread across her slightly weathered face.

“Yes, ma’am. Internal Affairs finally cleared me on that robbery shooting. Cleared by the shrink. I go back to work Monday. It’s all good.” Syd tried to sound cavalier, but Jesse had lived through the investigation with her as only a best friend could. She knew exactly what this meant.

“I’m so glad, honey. I know you’re relieved.” Jesse tousled Syd’s hair. “Sounds like cause for celebration. What’ll it be?”

“My usual, dirty goose.” Syd neatly refolded the memo and slid it back in her pocket as Jesse mixed her favorite martini with Grey Goose vodka, a splash of vermouth, and three olives. “God, I’m glad this is over. This desk duty drives me nuts.”

As she spoke, she let her trained gaze sweep the dance floor. The high of her sexual escapade in the restroom had been eliminated completely by the sneer of that disapproving bluenose, and she wanted to feel good again. She sipped the dirty martini Jesse slid across the bar and watched women tantalizing each other with their bodies. Searching eyes sought to connect hungry patrons with equally willing partners. Hands casually brushed strangers and, encountering no resistance, lingered and became more demanding. Body language and physical proximity provided clues to the level of intimacy between participants.

The visual stimuli summoned pangs of arousal between Syd’s legs and loneliness deep in her chest. She thought of her latest attempt at a relationship, Tina. That had lasted almost a year. It might’ve gone longer if not for the investigation. Then again, Tina had grown impatient waiting for a commitment, and Syd’s commitment lessened in direct proportion to her impatience. Why couldn’t good sex just be good sex forever? Women always wanted more than she could give.

“Quite a show, isn’t it?” Jesse followed Syd’s gaze around the room.

“Yes, it certainly is.” Syd loved Jesse’s place. Since being on administrative leave, she’d frequented Cop Out in search of the excitement her job normally provided. She usually found plenty.

“It’s a good thing you’ll be back to getting your thrills on the job,” Jesse said dryly. “You’re going through my customers like a swarm of sand fleas at the beach.”

“What am I supposed to do? A woman needs companionship, right?”

Jesse placed her hand over Syd’s, forcing Syd to meet her gaze. “My friend, you just need to find the woman who can ride you long, hard, and consistently, in spite of your puny attempts to buck her off. And when you do, I’m going to tell her that you’re a femme trapped in a butch job mimicking a stud.”

Syd pulled her hand from Jesse’s and poked a fake pout with her lips. “You’ll do no such thing. Besides, if she’s half the woman I want her to be, she’ll find out for herself.”

“That could pose a challenge.” Jesse started drying shot glasses. “You put up a hell of a front. Most lesbians have been married and divorced several times by your age.”

“My point exactly. Why suffer unnecessarily?”

“And on that subject, was it Lacy I saw ducking out of the restroom after you?”

Syd shrugged. “Could be.”

Jesse gave her a skeptical look. “What goes on at the Cop Out stays at the Cop Out as far as I’m concerned. But, like I told you last time, you don’t want to go there.”